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A Busy, Working Mom's Cleaning Schedule

02 April 2014

I feel the need to add a bit of disclaimer to this post....I am a new mom. I don't know what I'm doing. I am also a bit OCD by nature and like a good list. They keep me line. They help me know what the end goal is. I don't want to portray that I am perfect, especially as a mom. I mess up. A lot. I also don't want to portray that my house is perfect at all times of the day, no matter what. There's spit up in places I don't care to think about. There's a couch that probably has a small colony living underneath it by now. Our laundry piles might eventually be the death of me or our cat, Geoff. Most of my time is occupied by a newborn that sleeps, eats, and poops. This will all change at some point, as it should.

There will be plenty of times that I don't complete this list every week. There will be times where I will choose to hang out with my family instead of scrubbing my kitchen. There are times where I know I will fall short. These are just guidelines. I work better when I have a list. I might go a week and only get my living room cleaned because we had some spare time on Monday. I am fine with that. I like knowing how other people manage their busy lives, this is just a peek at mine. It will bend and sway and change over and over again.

I am not naive. I am not perfect. I mess up lots. I'm learning as I go in this thing called parenthood and I have only just begun.

Those are just my thoughts....Now continue on to the cleaning schedule...

I am a bit of a neat freak. Parenting has forced me to back off of that title a bit, but I still take some pride in having a nice, organized, clean house. When my house is messy, my brain lives in chaos. When I wake up to a semi-clean home, I feel like I have a better grasp on my sanity.

We lead busy lives. With a newborn, I can't devout 3 hours on a Saturday to deep cleaning my house anymore. At this point in our lives, that just doesn't work for us.

When I was pregnant, I created these two lists. I was too exhausted then to take a day to clean, so I split it up into daily tasks that were still obtainable. I have been using this system now that I'm on maternity leave as well. Once I go back to work, I think I can keep this up, but it might need to be altered here and there. One room only takes me about 20 minutes if I have been keeping up with my cleaning schedule. That is doable. I can do that.

I have normal daily tasks that I already do. When I wake up or before I go to bed (or both), I just do a quick pick up and sweep of the house. This makes getting up the next day easier and my cleaning task for that day doesn't seem too cumbersome.

I also have a deep cleaning list. On Sundays, I try to do one of these items. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. Sometimes my husband actually has a Sunday off and I won't clean then. That's family time. Sometimes it's good to rest and my oven can wait to be deep cleaned one more week. It's ok to rest, people. Remember that.

There you have it. The secret to my sanity. I have also started using these cleaning products. Any glass cleaner that smells like mint works for me. (I am not getting paid to say that, I just love the product. But, hey, if they want to give me free goods, I wouldn't say no.)